René Meeuws
René Meeuws (1954) is regional planner by profession with more than 30 years of professional experience in development planning, transport policy and strategy, transport planning, logistics, project management, institutional capacity development, training and project evaluation in more than 60 countries. He worked abroad for the United Nations Development Program and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs for more than ten years in the field of regional planning. René worked in Mozambique from 1983-1989, in Sudan from 1989-1991 and in Nicaragua from 1991-1993 as regional planner and transport planner. In that period he was especially engaged in formulating development strategies and promoting and implementing development planning and planning of transport infrastructure for national and regional authorities. After joining NEA in 1993 he has specialized in logistics, transport and trade facilitation, formulation of transport strategy and policy, transport infrastructure planning, and institutional capacity development.
René has carried out consultancy missions for World Bank, European Commission and Ministries of Economy and Transport of many countries in the world. He has been involved in many projects in the field of logistics and transport and trade facilitation in more than twenty countries. He also has wide professional experience in regional development, transport strategy development, transport sector investment programs and project evaluation. Working as Team leader of many projects Rene Meeuws finally has also wide experience of Project Cycle Management and Logical Framework. He has been involved in many transport and trade facilitation projects in South East Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and recently in the Arab League.
Sandra van Putten
Sandra van Putten is an institutional expert (both on bachelor/The Hague University of Applied Sciences and masters’ level/University of Leiden) and specialized in maritime transport policy and international cooperation and export promotion. Sandra has over 15 years of expertise in research and consultancy in the transportsector. Her area of expertise include inland shipping, maritime transport, evaluation and analysis of transport policies, organization of and support to export promotion activities like international workshops (Brazil and the Russian Federation) and market- and feasibility studies. Before joining Panteia/NEA Sandra worked at several policy departments of the Netherlands’ Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment and as financial staff member and project officer at several international cooperation programs of RVO (Agency of Netherlands’ Ministry of Economic Affairs).
Sandra carried out a vast number of projects for clients such as European Commission/DG MOVE, the Netherlands’ Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment, international governments./IFI’s, branche organisations and RVO. The last few years Sandra was involved in several maritime and inland shipping projects like the European evaluation of the RIS Directive, bilateral maritime cooperation between Turkey and the Netherlands (including a.o. a market research on the Turkish maritime sector, government support to Turkey in the field of IMDG cargo and several trademissions) and the evaluation of the Dutch maritime shipping policy.
Harrie de Leijer
Harrie de Leijer is a specialist in the field of multimodal transport and logistics, with a focus on inland waterways transport and ports. He has carried out numerous projects in this field in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa.
Harrie has initiated several interest groups in the field of inland waterways transport in several countries, has been a board member of Netherlands Engineering Associations, and participates in scientific committees and stakeholder groups in multimodal transport.
His speciality concerns the development of master plans for multimodal transport systems and corridors, based on an integrated approach containing the elements of infrastructure, market organisation, institutional organisation, supporting systems, promotion and knowledge exchange. He has been working on multimodal transport and inland navigation projects for the European Commission, Worldbank, Asian Development Bank, international, national and local governments, and private organisations.
In his previous job, Harrie was Director Strategy at Panteia, NEA in the Netherlands and Managing Director of SE-Track in Beijing. For several years he acted as Consul for the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management of the Netherlands, stationed at the Consulate General of the Netherlands in Shanghai, People's Republic of China. In the early years of his career Harrie worked for TNO, the Netherlands Organisation of Applied Scientific Research and NVI, the Netherlands Institute of Transport.
His experience in transport research and consultancy spans more than 30 years, of which the last 15 years mainly focus at multimodal transport, ports and waterways. For his achievements, Harrie has been awarded with a Knighthood in the Order of Orange-Nassau by H.M. Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands.
Richard van Liere
Richard van Liere is a specialist in multimodal transport and port-hinterland connectivity. Over the last decade, Richard has acquired specific knowledge and experience in development of inland waterway transport as part of multimodal transport solutions.
In the field of inland waterway transport, Richard has completed numerous projects in Europe, Asia and South America for international financing institutes, national and regional governments, industry associations and private organisations.
Throughout the years, sustainable inland waterway transport development has become a real area of focus, looking into topics like: multimodal analysis, corridor development and modal shift potential; River Information Services (RIS) and digitalization; integrative development of waterway infrastructure; and various studies related to greening of inland vessels (after-treatment systems, LNG, electric, hydrogen) with the aim to contribute to a zero-emission transport systems towards 2050. Also in the field of education and training, Richard has been active in various projects by bringing in (inter)national experiences and best practices to exchange knowledge.
Today, Richard has the function of project manager/consultant at STC-NESTRA (“Netherlands Expert Group for Sustainable TRAnsport and Logistics”), part of the STC-Group in Rotterdam the Netherlands. Previously Richard worked for STC B.V. (also part of STC-Group) and Panteia (the Netherlands).
Guy Merlin Motchebe Njatcheu
With more than 15 years of experience, Guy is a seasoned port operations professional with highly adapted training management skills and the ability to drive forward productivity and profitability through employee capacity building. Passionate about delivering and sharing operational best practice across all aspects of the terminal, a high level communicator, demonstrable skills in troubleshooting and problem solving in a number of key operational areas. Safety being always top priority, and the "license to operate".
Guy joined the STC team in 2014 and was involved since then in countless projects in the African region, including Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Namibia, Zambia, DR Congo, and Burundi. He has experience in port equipment training, container terminal, bulk and breakbulk operations, performance monitoring and delivering operational KPIs, as well as TOS systems such as OSCAR and NAVIS.